Our game cam is revealing just what busy bees our coyotes are. Here is a gang of four captured in one shot at The Hangout. This crew triggered eighteen camera shots over a span of about a half hour.
Just generally fiddling around in this spot, coming, going, having a seat, and possibly tinkering with figuring out what makes that camera flash and click. The infrared flash isn’t bright, it’s pretty subtle; but still noticeable to a clever dog, I’m sure. There are a lot of shots of them looking right at the camera.
I don’t believe that coyotes in our region pack-up a lot. Most of the food sources here are rodents and other small critters, so it makes more sense for them to disperse and hunt solo. I’m guessing this is a litter of spring pups, still hanging out together some, possibly with their dam. There are plenty of camera shots of a single dog coming or going as well; so they aren’t always in a party-of-four like this.
Here’s a rare daytime shot.
Right now, I have some lambs grazing in portable fencing right by The Hangout. I put Moses the LGD in with them at night for insurance. In the morning, I take Moses out, because he’s rude to the lambs and often won’t let them drink from the water tank. So, we have on our farm a shift change operation much like this one :
Yesterday morning I did chores super early, while it was dark and foggy. I am usually meticulous about shining my light along the whole fenceline, to make sure it’s still standing, and no lambs are caught. For whatever reason, I made an unconscious decision not to bother walking far enough into the fog to really check every inch of the fence. Everything looked peaceful, the lambs were mostly still bedded down. Moses was waking up and casually stretching.
At the moment I was going to turn and leave for the day, I noticed a pair of eyeballs at The Hangout, reflecting my headlamp light. Too narrowly-set and too far from the flock to be an escaped lamb’s. Too big to be a kitty cat, raccoon or opossum. And brazen: they didn’t flinch, even when I growled get outta here you… They just stayed, fixed, wide, and staring.
Somehow this made me think, what are you lookin’ at, anyway? That’s when I saw what. A lamb, completely entangled and entombed in the Electronet, way in the corner, closest to The Hangout. I wonder if that coyote was just sitting there, confounded, knowing that a helpless lamb was laying there, just begging to be eaten. But, also knowing that there was a sleeping Kuvasz in the pen, too, who would explode into a round of startled barking and confrontation if awoken? I can just imagine him thinking Dammit! How can I work this out somehow? And thus he sat, with patient and unwavering attention, with a bit of a refusal to budge from this near-golden opportunity.
The lamb had been down for awhile, covered in stress diarrhea, and her rumen was gurgling. But I got her out, and up, and she was ok. She would have been dead in a few more hours, immobilized on her side like that. I took Moses up to The Hangout, and partly down the coyote trail, just to push them back a little bit. Mr. Eyeballs complied. I re-set the tangled fence, and opted to leave Moses in there for the day.
And that is how a coyote saved the life of a lamb on the farm this week!
October 30, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Was the charger on? How many volts do you usually get on the fence? Thanks,
October 30, 2013 at 4:04 pm
Great post. Our hunter friends sometimes leave a camera outside our pastures to see what is eating our lambs. Great to see it helping out.
October 31, 2013 at 12:59 am
A lesson I have had to learn over and over–Always do full “rounds” when I have to check on sheep. A great post!
October 31, 2013 at 3:10 am
Leon, yes the charger was on. This fencing is getting old and is very high resistance, so I’m only getting about 1200 volts on it now. That’s enough for our domestic dogs to be “believers” and I conjecture probably the coyotes too (tho I’m not testing it out, thus the LGD in there at night, but it is true of the poultry pen). But I have been having trouble with the lambs getting out, that’s marginal voltage to maintain their respect.
October 31, 2013 at 3:11 am
Maggie- isn’t it the truth, it’s so easy to just get a little lazy and shortcut things, especially if there hasn’t been a problem for a long time.
November 1, 2013 at 1:11 am
Excellent story. We here the coyotes yipping around here all the time but I have yet to see one. I’m very grateful to our Great Pyrenees and the job they do.
November 2, 2013 at 5:53 pm
Great story, Michelle, and great cartoon reference!
November 2, 2013 at 10:25 pm
LOL, Janya, glad you got it- I often think about that cartoon and how funny and sorta true-to-life it is, with the wolf and the guardian dog having a cordial relationship, just doing their respective jobs to make a living. Though when I was a kid, the meaning was lost on me, as I don’t think I knew about LGDs then. I don’t think many people did back then, so it’s interesting that the cartoon writers did?